And the winner is!

The earliest times I remember being recognized was in third and fourth grades when I received gold and silver stars for homework well done. At St. Xavier High School I was promoted from the middle of the pack class of 1G to the top honor’s class of 2CC. This continued during my junior and senior years when I was in classes 3AD and 4AD.

By the time I started my freshman year at Xavier University, I enrolled in their Honor’s A.B. program during my freshman and sophomore years. I think three of the most exciting awards I received happened during commencement in my senior year at Xavier. I received the Fredin Scholarship to spend the summer in Paris studying French language, literature, and phonetics at the Alliance Francaise. That spring, I also received the Xavier Poetry Prize for composing a sonnet entitled Metamorphosis, and the Heidelberg Award for maintaining the highest grade-point average in my German classes.

As an adult, I’ve received a number of exciting prizes. In 1998, I received the volunteer recognition award and plaque for being an instructor of kids’ swim classes at the Blaisdell YMCA in Minneapolis. I volunteered and worked there for fifteen years. A year later, I received a teacher recognition award for being a community education teacher at Southwest Community School in Minneapolis. There I taught music classes such as harmonica, guitar, banjo, and tin whistle, as well as facilitating folk music jams.

In 2006, I was awarded first place in the Walnut Valley songwriting competition in Winfield, Kansas for composing a children’s song titled Pluto, which lamented the demotion of Pluto from planet to mini ball. However, my most surprising victory came in 1993 when I won first place in the Bob Dylan Soundalike contest at the 400 Bar in South Minneapolis. I was one of more than 40 contenders trying to sound more like Dylan than Dylan himself. What put my act over the top was the fact that I was the only contestant who sang an original song about Bob Dylan. It was called Dylan Talking Dream. For my efforts, I was awarded a $200 gift certificate to buy all the CDs and records I wanted for that price at a nearby music store.

I also had some of thrilling experiences at the Minnesota State Fair where I advanced to the semi-final round of their amateur talent contest three times. The first time was for singing and playing the song Let’s All Sing Like the Birdies Sing on autoharp. I advanced to the semi-finals twice more for playing instrumental versions of The William Tell Overture and Somewhere Over the Rainbow on autoharp.

I’ve enjoyed competing for various honors even when I didn’t receive any awards or advance to the next round. There is something to be said for “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat,” even though I find it healthy not to place too much stock in winning. I think that the excitement of competing is enough for me. The two contests in which I’ve competed most often (nine times in all), but have never won any prize were the International Autoharp

Championship in Winfield, Kansas and the annual autoharp contest at the Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering in Pennsylvania. Those experiences have been enough to test my humility and keep me honest.